Being Christian in Late Antiquity

A Festschrift for Gillian Clark

Edited by Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell

Honors one of the world's leading scholars of Late Antique Society and ancient religiosity

First volume to tackle the multi-dimensional experience of what it was to be Christian in Late Antiquity, from multi-authored perspectives

Focuses on both the literary construction of early Christianities and the lived experiences of concrete individuals and Christian communities

Analyzes and problematizes the particularities of actually living a Christian life in Late Antiquity

Offers an integrated perspective on religious identity, that does not essentialize religious experience

Being Christian in Late Antiquity

A Festschrift for Gillian Clark

Edited by Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell

Description

What do we mean when we talk about "being Christian" in Late Antiquity? This volume brings together sixteen world-leading scholars of ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Greco-Roman culture and society to explore this question, in honor of the ground-breaking scholarship of Professor Gillian Clark. After an introduction to the volume's dedicatee and themes by Averil Cameron, the papers in Section I, "Being Christian through Reading, Writing, and Hearing," analyze the roles that literary genre, writing, reading, hearing, and the literature of the past played in the formation of what it meant to be Christian. The essays in Section II move on to explore how late antique Christians sought to create, maintain, and represent Christian communities: communities that were both "textually created" and "enacted in living realities." Finally in Section III, "The Particularities of Being Christian," the contributions examine what it was to be Christian from a number of different ways of representing oneself, each of which raises questions about certain kinds of "particularities," for example, gender, location, education, and culture.

Bringing together primary source material from the early Imperial period up to the seventh century AD and covering both the Eastern and Western Empires, the papers in this volume demonstrate that what it meant to be Christian cannot simply be taken for granted. "Being Christian" was part of a continual process of construction and negotiation, as individuals and Christian communities alike sought to relate themselves to existing traditions, social structures, and identities, at the same time as questioning and critiquing the past(s) in their present.

Being Christian in Late Antiquity

A Festschrift for Gillian Clark

Edited by Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Discourses of Gillian Clark., Averil CameronI: Being Christian through Reading, Writing and Hearing 1. Why Don't Jews Write Biography? Simon Goldhill2. The Maccabaean Mother between Pagans, Jews and Christians., Tessa Rajak3. On the Status ofNBBooks in Early Christianity., Guy Stroumsa4. An Inextinguishable Memory: Pagan Past and Presence in Early Christian Writing., Joseph Lossl5. Playing Ball: Augustine and Plutarch on Capturing Wisdom., Carol HarrisonII: Being Christian in Community 6. Fiunt, non nascuntur christiani: Conversion, Community and Christian Identity in Late Antiquity? Andrew Louth7. Julian and the Christian Professors, Neil McLynn8. The City of Augustine: On the Interpretation ofNBCivitas, Catherine Conybeare9. Christianity and Authority in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of the Concept ofNBAuctoritas, Karla Pollmann10. Church Councils and Local Authority: The Development of Gallic Libri Canonum during Late Antiquity, Ralph MathisenIII: The Particularities of Being Christian. 11. The Empresses' tale, AD 300-360, Jill Harries12. 'Being Female':NB Verse commemoration at the Coemeterium S. Agnetis (Via Nomentana), Dennis Trout13. Self Portrait as a Landscape: Ausonius and his Herediolum, Oliver Nicholson14. Fashions for Varro in Late Antiquity and Christian Ways with Books, Mark Vessey15. The Image of a Christian Monk in Northern Syria: Symeon Stylites the Younger, Fergus Millar

Being Christian in Late Antiquity

A Festschrift for Gillian Clark

Edited by Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell

Author Information

Carol Harrison was born and educated in the North East of England and has spent very little time away from this region. She read Theology at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and continued her doctoral research in Oxford and Paris. She taught at Hull University for a year but was soon drawn back to live and work in the shadow of Durham Cathedral. She has taught in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham since 1989 and is currently Professor of the History and Theology of the Latin West. As with the North East, she has spent very little time away from Augustine of Hippo, and has previously published three books on various aspects of his thought with OUP. Her latest book The Art of Listening in the Early Church (2013) represents a departure from Augustine, although she has found it impossible to leave him behind.

Caroline Humfress (PhD Cantab.) is Reader in History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Before moving to Birkbeck College in 2004, she was Carlyle Research Fellow in the History of Political Thought at the University of Oxford and Assistant Professor of Law and Rhetoric in the Department of Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (2007), as well as various edited volumes, essays and articles on legal history and Late Antique religion.

Isabella Sandwell (PhD UCL) is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Bristol. She previously held temporary posts at Kings College London and Birbeck College London. She is author of Religious Identity in Late Antiquity: Greeks, Jews and Christians in Antioch, as well as a number of other edited volumes, essays and articles on late antique religion and society. She is currently working on late antique preaching and audience reception of it.

Contributors:

Averil Cameron, Emeritus, University of Oxford.Catherine Conybeare, Bryn Mawr College.Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge.Jill Harries, University of St Andrews. Carol Harrison, University of Durham. Caroline Humfress, Birkbeck College, University of London. Josef Lössl, Cardiff University. Andrew Louth, Emeritus, University of Durham.Ralph Mathisen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Neil McLynn , University of Oxford.Fergus Millar, Emeritus, University of Oxford. Oliver Nicholson, University of Minnesota. Karla Pollmann, University of Kent.Tessa Rajak, Emeritus, University of Reading, and University of Oxford. Isabella Sandwell, University of Bristol. Guy Stroumsa, University of Oxford and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dennis Trout, University of Missouri. Mark Vessey, University of British Columbia.